Excellent Women: The Festival Edition

I've written a few pieces about festivals already this year, so I've had a good study of most of the line-ups. Most look fantastic at a first glance, but on closer examination, there's something quite shocking about many of them. The ratio of male to female performers is still hugely unbalanced- it's starting to improve on the music stages, but have a scour of most of the comedy line-ups and you'll notice that they're often male-dominated. So I've come up with a list of some of the most excellent women you can catch at the festivals this summer - if you enjoy them, let the festival programmers know!

If you're lucky enough to have tickets to Glastonbury, then obviously, Dolly Parton is a must-see. (If you're a real fan, you've probably already practised this dance for the Dolly-mob!) Chrissie Hynde at Latitude is another real gem, as is Neneh Cherry at Festival no 6.

You might know Kate Tempest from her work as a spoken word artist, poet, novelist and playwright. She's now gone back to her roots - rapping. I was at her album launch the other night and it was phenomenal. She's such a talented lyricist and performer. You can catch her at Glastonbury, Latitude and Bestival.

There are a few brilliant comedians proving that women are funny too, damn it! You can catch Katherine Ryan who you might recognise from Nevermind the Buzzcocks at Latitude, Sara Pascoe at Latitude and Festival no 6, and the ever charming Josie Long at Glastonbury and Latitude. Better known now for her role in Game of Thrones, Gemma Whelan is also a stand-up comedian- she'll be performing at Green Man Festival. If you're there, you can also catch one of my favourite storytellers, Vanessa Woolf.

Journalist Viv Groskop decided to take on stand-up comedy and perform 100 gigs in 100 days- she wrote a book about the results; 'I laughed, I cried' is a riot of emotion. Catch her at Latitude.

Punk legend and epic excellent woman Viv Albertine is also pimping her book- the brilliantly titled 'Clothes, clothes, clothes. Music, music, music. Boys, boys, boys.' A girl after my own heart. She'll be talking about her infamous career with The Slits at Port Eliot, Bestival and Green Man Festival.

Nikki Shaill runs alternative live-drawing society Art Macabre, hosting deliciously dark, themed sessions at wonderful locations around London- and over festival season, in a field near you! Art Macabre are at Latitude (I may even be posing for them...eeek!) and at Also Festival, a fabulous newcomer kicking off this weekend. Also is run by Salon London, championing artistic, scientific and psychological ideas in a beautiful space. They have some fantastic speakers, including Pen Vogler on how to have high tea like Jane Austen, Anne Karpf on how to age, and Jessica Fellowes on how to live life at a more 'Downton Abbey' pace. 

There are lots of other activities to take part in at festivals this year. I'm particularly looking forward to catching a screening of Beyond Clueless, the documentary about the cult of teen movies, with a great soundtrack by the 90s pop culture obsessed Summer Camp, that's at Latitude but it will also come to the BFI Southbank in August.

Port Eliot are offering up the best fancy dress opportunities, with 'Get dressed with Barbara Hulanicki' and flower headdress-making with my favourite florists, The Flower Appreciation Society.

Me! photo by Gemma Hall

You might have noticed that a lot of the women I've mentioned are performing at Latitude- it's no coincidence that it's a woman who curates their arts programme. The wonderful Tania Harrison has an epic job on her hands every year, always including lots of diversity and a great range of newcomers and old pros. In fact, she has, this year, given me the chance to perform my own show, Sleepyhead, my story of growing up as a narcoleptic. With the help of classical fairytales like Sleeping Beauty, modern movies like Inception and my own experience of living a life much sleepier than most, I'll takes a look at those 'little slices of death' and how I learnt not to loathe them. So if you're at Latitude, please do come and see me at 11am on Friday 18th July in The Shed of Stories!

Want more excellent women? Check out the rest in our series.

Excellent Women: Grace Du Prez

I was recently introduced to Grace Du Prez at a dinner being held by another excellent woman, Miss Cakehead. Grace rocked up with a hand-made scarecrow version of Miss Cakehead, commissioned for a garden installation she was working on. It was a wonderful likeness - even embroidered with all of Miss Cakehead's tattoos!

One wonders how you get into this line of work… well, Grace graduated from Loughborough University with a BA Hons Degree in Multi Media Textiles before going on to complete her MA in Mixed Media Textiles at the Royal College Of Art. 

Grace describes herself as a designer-maker, using digital embroidery and material manipulation techniques to produce one-off custom designs as well as more wearable diffusion pieces. Saying that she specialises in statement jewellery is something of an understatement, as you can see from these incredible, over-sized pieces. Unsurprisingly, she's been involved in lots of festivals, namely with The Secret Emporium.

I love these pieces of 'hairy jewellery'. Grace explains the inspiration behind the collection:

Hair can be seen as a thing of beauty. Representing a woman’s femininity, power, confidence and sexuality. However when it is removed from the body, the context changes and it becomes something we do not want to touch. 

Hair is said to be our best accessory that can represent who we are as a person and these jewellery pieces question our relationship we have with it.

And if that's not statement enough, how about this UV collection?

Grace has also exhibited at a number of art galleries - my favourite being a show by Guts for Garters, a wonderful art project run by yet more excellent ladies - Rachel Chudley and Cassie Beadle - pictured below.

The pieces above and below are part of an interpretation of British culture, combining tradition and heritage with a modern day stance. Fabric manipulation is incorporated with experimental embellishment techniques to create contemporary textiles.

Grace has also put her skills to use for performance pieces - below is the outfit she created for 'Does my bum look big in this?', a comment on society's ideals of the body.

Whilst you might not want to buy your own giant bum dress, Grace's jewellery is perfect for the festival season - you can find it in her online store, and follow her on twitter to hear about the latest markets or galleries she'll be selling at. Or you could always drop her a line if you're after your own personalised scarecrow?

Excellent Women: Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia shot by one of her sons, Henry Herschel Hay Cameron  in 1873

Julia Margaret Cameron is one of my favourite photographers, not least because hers is a wonderful story of talent discovered later in life and a woman brave enough to do things her own way.

Mary Hillier, Julia's parlour maid, as the tragic heroine of Arthurian legend.

Born in Calcutta in 1815, Julia's father, James Pattle was an official with the East India Company and her mother, Adelaine de l’Etang, was of French aristocratic descent. However, it was not until she was 48 and living on the Isle of Wight that she took up photography, having been given a camera by her daughter.

Daisy Taylor

Rather than aiming for precision and clarity in her photos as professional portrait photographers did at the time, she wanted to capture the emotion of the sitter. For this she mainly used soft focus techniques, sometimes consciously leaving prints with smudges, printing from cracked negatives and scratching away the emulsion of negatives. Her 'out of focus' effects were often criticized in her lifetime and it wasn't until many years later that people recognised her for the genius she was.

King Lear

As well as portraits, she loved to create scenes inspired by religion, literature and the classical world. She had no interest in running a commercial studio and never did commissioned portraits, but instead enlisted friends, servants and neighbours to sit for her. Her neighbour on the Isle of Wight happened to be Lord Tennyson who became a lifelong friend and supporter of her work, commissioning her to create photograph 'illustrations' for his book, Idyll of the King.

The Whisper of the Muse. Elizabeth Keown, G.F. Watts and Kate Keown

Tennyson often referred to Cameron's sitters as her 'victims', for posing in those days involved sitting still for long periods of time, as one subject recollects:

“The studio I remember was very untidy and very uncomfortable. Mrs. Cameron put a crown on my head and posed me as the heroic queen…. The exposure began. A minute went over and I felt as if I must scream, another minute and the sensation was if my eyes were coming out of my head; a third and the back of my neck appeared to be afflicted with palsy; a fourth, and the crown, which was too large, began to slip down my forehead; a fifth – but here I utterly broke down, for Mr. Cameron, who was very aged, and had unconquerable fits of hilarity which always came in the wrong places, began to laugh audibly, and this was too much for my self possession, and I was obliged to join the dear old gentleman.” 

Darwin

Cameron's sister connected her to many famous subjects including Darwin, Millais, Rossetti, Burne Jones and Henry Cole, the founding director of the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Tennysons' home at Freshwater in Isle of Wight became something of a salon welcoming visitors like Lewis Carroll.

Portrait of Alice Liddell - the Alice from Alice in Wonderland

There are lots of lovely books you can buy on Cameron's work, including my favourite, Julia Margaret Cameron's Women. You can see many of her portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, the V&A and at her family home on the Isle of Wight, Dimbola Lodge.

Carrion by Ellen Rogers

Once you become familiar with her work, you'll spot her influence in many photographers' work, particularly those who still choose to work with analogue film. I'm a huge fan of Ellen Rogers whose work has definite echoes of Cameron's aesthetics - she has some wonderful books of her photographs available on her website. (Coincidentally, and in keeping with Cameron's tradition of working within a circle of artists and writers, Ellen Rogers has shot Molly Crabapple, our last excellent women!)

Excellent Women: Molly Crabapple

Photo by Steve Prue

Molly Crabapple is a name you should know - it's certainly memorable enough. Her work as both an artist and writer has gained her international acclaim while at the same time highlighting causes close to her heart, from the Occupy Wall Street movement in her home town of New York, to Guantanamo Bay, where her reportage saw her shortlisted for a 2013 Frontline Print Journalism Award.

(Above and below are from Shell Game, Molly's kickstarted show inspired by the financial crisis, now available entirely on creative commons)

Molly originally brought art to the people with the foundation of her alternative life-drawing salon, Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art school which now takes place in over 120 cities.

'I never, ever imagined that my hair-brained scheme of alternative life drawing would end up taking over the globe. I think it succeeded in part because it was a scheme to unite the underworld - glittering burlesque performers and dorky comics artists combined.'

Molly herself enjoyed a brief stint as a burlesque dancer, like those who inhabit the realms of Dr Sketchy nights, but confesses,

'I was a terrible dancer myself, but always worshipped the tough, glittering girls and boys of the demimonde. Being a dancer is a lot like alchemy. You change in a dirty kitchen and schlep your bag through the snow, because, for five minutes, you can embody Glamour and Desire.'

Described by The Guardian as being 'equal parts Hieronymus Bosch, William S. Burroughs and Cirque du Soleil,' you can see that the fantastical characters Molly paints stem from her love of the otherworldly, but her portraits of people like Trayvon Martin are equally moving.

In 2013, she discovered that one of her posters for the Occupy movement has been bought by the Museum of Modern Art. She also found out that the FBI has a 3,000 page file on her, though they still haven't revealed what's in it. But knowing she's under their watchful eye hasn't stopped her travelling the world reporting on political events with her sketchbook, as well as speaking at institutes like The Museum of Modern Art, The London School of Economics, and Harvard university.

Molly's collaborated with many wonderful authors, journalists and musicians- she and Kim Boekbinder aka The Impossible Girl created 'I Have your Heart', a charming short film which they made with Jim Batt.

It's amazing to think that Molly only began writing in 2012, in response to her arrest during a rally to mark the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Since then she's covered everything from Guantanamo Bay, to the war in Syria to Banksy, as well as this brilliant piece on the slightly less controversial subject of turning 30.

(Molly was forbidden from drawing the guards' faces at Guantanamo Bay)

She still manages to get straight to the heart of the issue;

'Age is a weapon society uses against women. Each year that you gain comfort in your own flesh, your flesh is seen as worth less. Thirty, like 40 or 50, is a demarcation line, but a particularly loaded one. Cross it, says the world, and you leave the trifling-but-addictive privileges of girlhood behind. Invisibility this way, ma'am.'

I turned 30 last week, and found that, as usual, Molly's words hit the spot.

I hope you enjoy discovering her work too. Next year her illustrated memoir, Drawing Blood will be published by Harper Collins, but in the meantime you can buy her previous books and prints on her website.

Excellent Women: Petra Storrs

Our excellent woman this week is the one and only Petra Storrs. Art director, prop stylist, set and costume designer, Petra is who you go to when you want a dress made out of chocolate, a bedroom made out of paper or a pair of rocking-horse shoes. She's who Lady Gaga turned to when she wanted a dress made out of stained-glass for her video 'Born this way'.

Lady Gaga in Born this Way

Petra's clientele includes many names you'll know- and in fact you'll probably find yourself thinking, 'ah, so that's who made that!' throughout this post.

Photo by Alice Hawkins

Paloma Faith's mirror dress for example? Or her 'blimp' costume for her epic performance at Glastonbury?

For what is a hugely varied job, does Petra sometimes find it hard explaining what she does to people?

'Yes, especially as people concentrate on the design part, but with bigger projects the designing can be a mere 10% of the project, with the rest of my time spent running the budget, organising construction, haggling on prices, sourcing props, emailing for hours and hours, planning and organising logistics... the majority of it is not at all glamorous! But I really enjoy all the different elements that make up the job and I think if you are a designer you can apply the practice to anything from clothes to products to events to buildings - it's all the same principal.'

Petra assures me that her chocolate dress has not been eaten! (Yet, I want a nibble on the hem.)

Rachel May Snider in Camellia and The Rabbit

And Petra's not just good at making things with her hands - she also designed a gorgeous website for Rachel May Snider - I think we need more sites with dancing lobsters and woodland glades full of bluebells! Petra also created Rachel's incredible costume and props for her last production, Camellia and the Rabbit, a one woman show about Rachel's love affair with tea.

Rachel in Dressing for Breakfast

Petra has been working on a new show with performance artist Rachel, inspired by a collection of cardboard costumes cut from the back of 1950s cereal boxes! The show is called 'Dressing for Breakfast' and involves a three-stringed washing line system flying cardboard cut-out clothes in and out over Rachel on stage, as she recounts the trials and tribulations of internet dating gone pear shaped, and looking back on the history of fashion. I saw the 'work in progress' preview and it had me in hysterics - I can't wait to see the full show.

Petra operates the washing-line system throughout the show: 'It was an experiment playing with different cut out costumes on pulleys, interchanging them to tell a story. Being part of the performance was a great experience, if slightly outside my comfort zone!'

Having worked with such incredible stars, I wondered what else could be left on Petra's to-do list...

'I'd like to work on more dance projects, making garments that change with the movement of the dancers - perhaps for someone like Beyonce. But I think what would be really great would be to make a range of accessories that appealed to the general population, that's the next challenge.' 

Keep an eye on Petra's blog to see what she's up to next, maybe we'll get some chocolate accessories.

Not done being inspired? Discover more excellent women.

Excellent Women: Celia Birtwell

Ossie and Celia

I was mentioning Celia Birtwell to a young friend recently, and she said 'oh, you mean the one who works for Topshop?' Apart from making me feel jolly old, I was also sad to think that there's a generation out there who now purely associate Celia with a high street collaboration - to be fair a brilliant one - rather than realising that she is 'the face that launched a thousand prints', one of the most influential fashion figures of the sixties, creative partner of Ossie Clark and muse to David Hockney.

Celia studied textiles and pottery at college in the 1950s, but later moved to London where she worked as a costumier for The Royal Shakespeare Society. Friends encouraged her to go back to textile design, so she created some Op-Art inspired furnishing fabrics for Heal's.

By 1965 Celia had moved in with Ossie Clark, the same year Alice Pollock of iconic London store Quorum commissioned a collection from them. They went on to dress the stars of the swinging sixties, from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix, Twiggy, Mick and Bianca Jagger.

Ossie, Celia, Kay and David

Celia and Ossie married in 1969 with only Ossie's sister Kay and their friend, the artist David Hockney as guests. Celia was dressed in an Ossie dress decorated with her trademark Mystic Daisy print. A year later Hockney painted his famous portrait of the couple and their cat Percy which now hangs in the Tate. They had two sons together but divorced in 1974. Celia continued to be Hockney's muse, working as a paid model for him in the later 70s.

Mystic Daisy fabric

In the 1980s Celia went on to design home fabrics and opened her own shop which she ran successfully until it closed two years ago. In 2006 she enjoyed a wonderful comeback with a capsule collection for Topshop which was so successful, she went on to do two more. She's also designed collaborations with Boots, John Lewis and Uniqlo.

You can see Celia talking about one of her most famous prints, Mystic Daisy in the video below.

In 2011 she was named CBE in the Queen's birthday Honours list in recognition of her services to the fashion industry. That year she also published Celia Birtwell the book, offering a retrospective of her life.

You can see many of Celia and Ossie's iconic designs in the V&A museum, and you can also buy original vintage pieces from Celia's own site, if you have a lot of dosh!

Excellent Women: Wendy Bevan

Portrait by Martina Scorcucchi

I juggle a number of different jobs - I write as a journalist, but also as a copywriter and editor; I've just started to work as a producer and I used to be a stylist. And I don't think I'm alone, I have many friends who are keen to try lots of things. After all, we only get one life, why spend it doing just one job if there's more than one thing that interests you? My excellent woman this week is Wendy Bevan, one of a new breed of artists who are thriving on a similar approach to life.

All the following images are by Wendy Bevan

It was Wendy's photography that I first came across and I instantly fell in love with her use of analogue film, as well as the wonderful models and stylists she works with. She's done shoots for Vogue Italia and countless other fashion bibles, has photographed legends like Tilda Swinton and Debbie Harry and she's about to exhibit a collection of self portraits, shot on her signature polaroid camera. 

But this is only one of Wendy's talents; the forthcoming exhibition is an audio visual experience set to music composed by Wendy. Oh yes, she happens to also be a brilliant composer, talented musician, show-stopping singer and prolific actress. To call her multi-talented is something of an understatement- you can read my full review of the recent show she put on, but in short it was the most inspirational live music event I've been to in years. Wendy wasn't just singing, she'd created a persona that came alive with a combination of her wonderful acting talents and her haunting voice. She's also sung and performed with the inimitable Punchdrunk, most recently in their New York production Sleep No More. 

I'm a huge fan of some of the short films Wendy has made too - 'Reaching for the moon' is one of my favourites.

"Films inspire me, theres a very visual side to music and I aim to create a world found within the space between image and sound."

On being asked about working in so many different media, Wendy explains,

"I treat all of them as one. They all come from the same place, but are different strands of my voice as an artist. It's how I choose to platform them that is vital in their integrity."

What can we expect from her new exhibition, Slow Light at London's The Cob Gallery from 8th to 31st May?

"Slow Light is a combination of new photographic work and music, choreographed and curated using projections and space. As an installation it aims to be an immersive experience for the audience."

And why the fondness for analogue film in a digital age?

"Because I understand how I can express myself this way. Digital doesn't answer my questions."

If only all 'selfies' were this beautiful.

You can buy Wendy's work online here.